Well my kids know my preference is the same as their mother's was: no funeral, celebration of life is OK as there is food, drink, laughter, and music. Both of us believe(d) that these events are for those left behind, the living, and not the dead. We did just that for my wife, and I put together a mix of her favorite songs, the penultimate one being "our song" (Ray Charles' I Can't Stop Loving You) and concluding with the whole congregation singing Sweet Caroline, as she always maintained Neil Diamond did that for her and not that Kennedy girl.
That said, I was just thinking about that the other day and I hearkened back to one of my last trips to the little mining/cattle town I initially grew up in. We were attending some extended family event in the Community Hall, and I had no sooner sat down than Eddie Arnold's Lonesome Cattle Call was played. It was my later father's favorite song and as if he was welcoming me back from the cemetery out the back and around the corner. And later as we were driving down the hill to a town big enough to have lodging in the brand new Corvette I had just won, Andy Williams' Moon River -- "you're crossing it in style some day" -- came on and it reminded me of how far I had come from no indoor plumbing, no electricity. Tack on Charles' I Can't Stop Loving You for my late wife and Louis Armstrong's It's A Wonderful World and that would do it. But not for me to say. I won't be around for it.
